• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
/p*\
"BAIDERS OF THE
LOST ARK"
f
Story
Conference
TranscriptJanuary 23, 1978 thru January 27, 1978
|,.C
L
Ge0
xm,m^j™^-
s
?
Lelbet9
:
^Z
K
^
d
?
n
-
 
"RAIDERS"
X.
G — We'll just talk general ideas, what the concept ofit was. Then I'll get down to going specifically throughthe story. Then we will actually get to where we canstart talking down scenes,
in
the end I want to end up
'/"^<K-.
with
a
list of scenes. And the way 1 work generally is
'
I figure a code, a general measuring stick perameter.I can either come up with thirty scenes or sixty scenesdepending on which scale you, want to work on. A thirtyscene thing means that each
scene
is going to be aroundfour pageslong.A sixty one means that every scene isgoing to run twenty pages long. (?)
It
depends on, partof it is the... (short gap in the tape) knock some ofthese out, and this doesn't work out the way we thoughtit would. You can move things
around,
but it generallygives you an idea, assuming that
what
we really want at
'
the end of all this is a hundred and twenty page script,or less. But that's where we really want to go. Thenwe figure out vaguely what the pace of, how fast it'sgoing to move and how we're going to do it. I have atendency to work rather mathematically about all this stuff.I found it easier and it does lay things out. Especiallya thing like this. The basic premise is that it's sortof a serialesque kind of movie. Meaning that there arecertain things that have to continue to happen. It'salso basically an action piece, for the most part. Wewant to keep things interspaced and at the same timebuild it. As I build this up, you'll see it's donevaguely by the numbers.Generally, the concept is a serial idea. Done like theRepublic serials. As a thirties serial. Which is wherea lot of stuff comes from anyway. One of the main ideaswas to have, depending on whether it would be
every
tenminutes or every twenty minutes, a sort of a cliffhangersituation that we get
our
hero into. If it's every tenminutes we do it twelve times.
I
think that may be alittle much. Six times is plenty.S — And each cliffhanger is better than the one before.G — That is the
progression
we have to do. It's hardto come up with. The trouble with
cliff
hangers is, youget somebody into something, you sort have to get themout in a plausible way. A believable way, anyway.That's another
JLmportant
concept of the movie — that itbe totally believable. It's a spaghetti western, onlyit takes place in the thirties. Or it's James Bond andit takes place in the thirties. Except James Bond tendsto get a little outrageous at times. We're going to take
the.unrealistic
side of it off. and make it more like the
Clint
Eastwood westerns.
 
G — The thing with this is, we want to make a
very
believable character. We want him to be extremely goodat what he does, as is the Clint Eastwood characteror the James Bond character. James Bond and the manwith no name were very good at what they did. Theywere
very,
fast
with a gun. they were very slick, theywere
very:professional.
They
were Supermen.S — Like Mifune.G — Yes, like Mifune. He's a real professional. He'sreally good. And that is the key to the whole thing.That's something you don't see that much anymore.S — And one of the things that really helped Mifune inall the Kurosawa movies is that he was always surroundedby really inept characters, real silly buffoons, whichmade him so much more majestic. If there are occasionswhere he comes up against, not the
arch-villian,
butthe people around
him
shouldn't be the smartest...G — Well, they shouldn't be buffoons. The one thingwe're going to do is make a very good period piece,that is realistic and believable. A
thirties
movie inthe,even in the Sam Spade genre. Even in the MalteseFalcon there were some pretty goofy characters, butthey were all pretty real in their own bizarre way.S — Elijah Cook.
G~--~
ElijaS
Cook"
might~not have"been-the brightest
person"
in the world. In a way he was the buffoon of the piece,but at the same time he was very dangerous and he wasvery... They were strong characters. If we keep itthat mode of believability...S — It's just like you don't put Lee Van
Cleef
as anaccomplice to... (garbled)G — No, you put Eli Wallich.- Did you see "The Good, TheBad And the Ugly"? The Eli Wallich character is a goofycharacter, but at the same time he's very dangerous and
he's
very
funny
and
he's
... We can have that kind ofthing. The main thing is for him to be a super hero inthe best sense of the word, which is John Wayne, ClintEastwood, Sean Connery tradition of a man who we can alllook up to and say, "Now there's somebody who reallyknows his job. He's really good at what he does and he'sa very dangerous person. But at the same time we'reputting him in the kind of Bogart mold, like
"Treasure of
Sierra Madre" or ...S — Or even the Clark Gable thing we talked about.
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...